1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to aircraft maintenance, and more particularly, to a system and method for performing cost analysis on airplane schedule interruptions.
2. Background Information
Airplane schedule interruptions are delays cancellations air turnbacks or diversions which are due to an unplanned mechanical/maintenance problem Schedule interruptions may cost an airline millions of dollars each year.
Presently the current methodology for monitoring system interrupts does not incorporate cost data into the equation. Rather, the current metrics produce results in terms of the raw number of scheduled interrupts events per number of departures. The general limitation involved in the current methodology lies in the fact that while raw event counts offer a glimpse into certain schedule interrupt trends, such trends allow prioritization only in terms of event frequency, and not in terms of the actual dollar cost to an airline in dealing with such schedule interrupt events.
For example, assume event ‘X’, a particular class of schedule interrupt events (i.e., an event associated with a particular ATA group for a particular airplane model) occurs 100 times in a calendar year, while another class, event ‘Y’, occurs only 90 times during the same year. When viewed only in terms of raw event counts, event X appears to outrank event Y by approximately a 10% margin. However, if, in fact, the average aircraft downtime associated with event X is one hour, while that for event Y is two hours, it now appears that not only has the ranking order shifted (X at 100 hrs per year, and Y at 180 hrs per year), the associated aircraft downtime to deal with event Y overrides that for event X by approximately an 80% margin.
The use of aircraft downtime as a metric strongly associated with airline cost, offers an informed, and well-understood perspective on the ranking of schedule interrupt event categories. Such rankings are used by both aircraft manufacturers and airline customers to prioritize work efforts, and to target new technological development to minimize schedule interrupt event occurrences.
Current schedule interrupt driver rankings shifted significantly for each aircraft model evaluated. This indicates that current schedule interrupt driver ranking model does not provide a good basis for, or correlation to actual airline cost incurred. The use of the current method ostensibly leads the analyst to incorrect conclusions, and inappropriate work focus.
Therefore it would be desirable to provide a system and method that overcomes the problems associated with the prior art. The system and method will provide a means of appropriately distinguishing and ranking schedule interrupt event groups based on airline costs typically associated with such event categories to achieve such consistent, cost-based, relative rankings.